


The Tumult

by Eglantine



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Barricade Day, Gen, Nicolas Lallemand, Police Violence, Protests, early friendship, political awakening, violence (briefly)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-01 06:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4009360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eglantine/pseuds/Eglantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Barricade Day, a string of June days twelve years earlier. [Hugo got the year wrong, shhh.]</p><p>"Bahorel had figured in the bloody tumult of June, 1822, on the occasion of the burial of young Lallemand."<br/>Lesgle and Grantaire- newly arrived in Paris and not yet quite the men they will become- almost do, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tumult

To say that Grantaire and Lesgle de Meaux had been drunk the entire time from their moment of meeting in the autumn to this present cool late spring afternoon was surely not entirely correct. Things had been achieved in the interim: women met, friends made (though none as good), the occasional class attended, the occasional sketch completed.

But the true fruits of Lesgle's first year in Paris were a greater understanding of his own character. He was a man made for companionship. Growing up with no sisters or brothers, perfectly content to read and draw rude pictures and make polite conversation with his father's friends, he had never known before that his was a soul that required company to truly thrive.

And as it happened, on said late spring afternoon— it was early June, in point of fact, a time Lesgle always thought of as summer even though it wasn’t quite yet, and the drizzling weather was certainly making no arguments in favor of it— Lesgle and Grantaire were indeed on their way to drunkenness.

“All is in chaos,” Grantaire declared in lieu of a toast as he raised his glass. “I must waste my time with you because other friends, men I thought interesting and sensible, now choose to spend their days clustered around doorways waiting for a sick old man to pat them on the head.”

“There’s more to it than that, surely,” Lesgle said, though he couldn’t help but laugh at such a picture of their friends, some of whom crowded daily outside the Chamber of Deputies, waiting for the latest news of the debates. “The law they propose is plainly illegal—”

“Careful, you’re sounding like a good student.”

“That’s what’s so laughable about it!” Lesgle said. “Even I can see it’s plainly outrageous, and I know nothing at all about law or politics.”

“So shall I expect to drink alone tomorrow? You will go bob amongst the crowds and play revolutionary? You could jump on a table, develop a stammer.”

“If this law passes, waiting outside the door will be as close to participating in the Deputies’ decisions as anyone like us will get,” Lesgle said, but then promptly added, “But no. They will do well enough without me, you needn’t fear. I don’t dare meddle in important things, not with my luck.”

“By another reckoning, no one thing in this life is any more important than the rest, so you may do as you please. Who is to say this very glass of wine may not somehow decide your destiny? Whereas all these gatherings and rumblings will very likely come to precisely nothing.”

“This wine is doing nothing to improve your temper,” Lesgle said. “Finish that glass, we will go for a walk.”

Grantaire scowled but did not protest, which Lesgle knew by now was usually essentially the same as agreeing. He drank off the last of the wine and they departed, heading nowhere in particular, collars turned up against the grey sky, threatening rain.

Near Pont Royal, they began to dimly hear the sounds that any Parisian (even ones as new as they) knew was the sound of Trouble. Shouting, faintly— not one person, but a crowd, from the direction of the Chamber of Deputies. Without a word, Lesgle broke into a jog towards the sound, and Grantaire could not help but follow. They had not gotten far before a young man who looked like a student tore past them, nearly bowling Lesgle over as he brushed by, wheeled around a corner, and vanished from sight.

“We should turn back,” Grantaire said. He had seized hold of Lesgle’s arm to steady him from the student’s push, and he did not let go yet. “If he wants to get away that quickly, I cannot imagine why we would want to get any closer.”

“Yes, you’re right, of course,” Lesgle said, but the sentence trailed away, his gaze fixed on the direction the young man had come running from. There were others, fleeing the still-unseen heart of the trouble, ducking away into side streets. Grantaire tightened his hold on Lesgle’s arm, half-concerned that he might suddenly bolt.

“This is not the moment to suddenly acquire a complete disregard for your own safety,” Grantaire said. “Last night when I was trying to persuade you to cheat those medical students at cards would have been a far more convenient moment.”

“Never fear,” Lesgle laughed. “Courage is not one of my vices. Come, we’ll go another way.”

Grantaire, relieved, released Lesgle’s arm at last, and they began to double back they way they’d come. They had not gotten far when a sharply dressed gentleman suddenly stepped out in front of them from a narrow side street. They both paused to let him pass, but he did not— he stopped as well. Quite at odds with his neat, fashionable dress was the heavy-looking baton in his hand. Grantaire thought at once of how fast that student had been running.

“Good afternoon,” Lesgle said, his voice somehow remaining steady and cheerful.

“ _Vive le roi_  is the word today,” the man said.

Lesgle laughed. “Oh? And who will we cheer for tomorrow?”

The quip had hardly been made before the man swung his baton—it connected with a sickening crack and Lesgle stumbled backwards, clutching his head, and slumped against the wall of the building beside them, then slid down to the ground. Grantaire rounded on the man, who raised the baton again.

Grantaire certainly had not learned savate thinking it would ever be of general use— but such were the vicissitudes of fate, he thought. Grantaire did not consider this in the moment itself, of course, but after, after he had caught the man’s baton instinctively in his hand. An instant passed in which they both seemed slightly surprised by this development, but Grantaire recovered first and jerked the baton out of the man’s hand with a sharp twist. Then, not knowing what else to do, he threw it.

The man turned after it, and as he did, he found himself quite suddenly face-to-face with another young man whom Grantaire had never seen before, and whose approach he had not noticed. To judge by his expression, neither had his assailant. Grantaire hoped very much that this individual was indeed a student, as his dress suggested, because he was quite big and looked quite strong.

This question was quickly answered when the newcomer greeted his well-dressed opposite with a swift and skillful-looking punch to the gut. As the man doubled over, the big student seized his shoulders and, catching Grantaire’s eye, shouted, “What are you doing? Run!”

Grantaire rushed at once to Lesgle’s side. He was plainly still dazed, but there was no time to waste. Grantaire hauled Lesgle to his feet, slid an arm around his waist, and, as commanded, ran, Lesgle stumbling at his side. Down a street, round a corner, through an alley—he did not pay much attention to where they ran, as long as it was _away._

Just as Grantaire began to think they had perhaps gone far enough, he heard a voice from behind them shouting to stop. Neither turning nor slowing, he shouted back some detailed descriptions of what the speaker could go do to himself and his mother— breaking off suddenly when he drew up alongside them. It was the big student. Grantaire stopped. The coast seemed clear—or at least, clear of assailants. Some other passers-by were giving them slightly odd looks. The big student ushered them into a small side street.

“Well, you took my advice, so I’ll ignore your other comments,” he said. “Are you both alright?”

“I think I might be sick,” Lesgle said, then turned away and doubled over and, indeed, was.

“That happens sometimes,” the student said calmly. “Come now, look at me, let’s see.”

Grantaire helped Lesgle straighten up. The baton had struck the side of his face: his eye and cheek were already swelling, and would no doubt be displaying spectacular bruises before long. The big student didn’t seem overly concerned by the sight.

“I haven’t seen you two outside the Chamber of Deputies,” the student said. “Who are you?”

“The unluckiest man in Paris,” Lesgle replied. “I can be beaten in a riot at which I did not intend to be present.”

“It wasn’t a riot,” the student said darkly. “It was an attack. You’re far from the only innocent men they took a swing at. Get him home,” he said, turning to Grantaire. “Don’t leave him alone.”

“I never would have,” Grantaire replied. “And who are you, by the way?”

“You’re called Bahorel, aren’t you?” Lesgle said. “I think I’ve seen you at the law school…”

“Yes,” he replied. “That’s me.”

“I’m Lesgle— this is Grantaire—”

“Bossuet,” Grantaire cut in. “You are proving a long-contested point. Even knocking your brains out will not keep you from talking.”

“Get him home,” he said to Grantaire again, sounding amused. “I suspect we will speak again.”

*

They said nothing about it until late that night. Grantaire, pencil in hand, hunched over a still life in which he had entirely lost interest, was contemplating if he should eat the apple that provided the centerpiece, or wait and see if he was equally bored of it in the morning. It was this serious reverie which Lesgle’s voice, drifting faintly from the direction of the bed, interrupted.

“Have you heard any more about what happened?”

“No, I’ve been here with you,” Grantaire replied.

“Oh, well I wasn’t sure— you might have gone out while I was sleeping.”

“Didn’t.” He leaned forward and grabbed the apple. “What’s it matter?”

“If a man is to be beaten, he ought to know the reason, at least.”

“You didn’t kiss his ass fast enough, that’s the reason. He was just some hired thug,” Grantaire said. “It’s a tempting target, I’m sure, bands of roving students who think themselves clever.”

“I should have held my tongue, that I’ll admit, but— you can’t really feel such disdain for them? The other students?”

“You mean you agree with them?”

“Well, I don’t… I don’t know anything about it, really, of course…”

Silence fell between them. Neither felt certain enough of his position to argue it, neither knew how to argue with the other, for they had never argued before— or if so, only in jest.

*

Lesgle’s throbbing head and cheek kept him awake, and he lay staring at the ceiling, his thoughts tumbling about in a fuzzy and jumbled way that he was not used to. The fleeing student; the fine cut of the man with the baton’s coat; Bahorel, whose name he had heard often, whom everyone liked.  _And what children we must have looked to him_ , Lesgle thought. For the first time since he came to Paris, he did not feel like being seventeen made him a man.

*

Bahorel was a man who could slouch at a table with an air of such complete nonchalance that observers would quickly become convinced that he must be someone very important indeed. He looked at everyone as if he already knew them, walked every street as if he had been born there.

“That’s an impressive bruise,” Bahorel said when Lesgle took a seat across from him. A swollen band of purplish-black bloomed across Lesgle’s cheek, spreading under his eye and disappearing into his hair.

Lesgle’s hair was neither curly nor straight, precisely, but an assortment of uncontrollable cowlicks that stood in any direction they pleased. His hairline was high (suspiciously so, he was inclined to think lately), his coat quite shabby. Bahorel, on the other hand, was finely dressed, the embroidery on his waistcoat frankly bordering on opulence. He was big and broad, almost as if Lesgle’s own short, compact frame had been redrawn on twice the scale. It was no small part of Lesgle that devoutly wished, as he sat down, that he was taller, not so red-haired, had a new coat, had kept learning boxing. But then he realized that Bahorel’s sharp gaze took in none of this. He had even given the bruise in question just a passing glance. He was only waiting to see what Lesgle would say.

“I will take that as a particular compliment, coming from you,” Lesgle said, suddenly feeling quite at ease. “I am told you are a man who has seen his fair share of bruises.”

“I'm something of a connoisseur, it’s true.”

“I owe you thanks for your actions yesterday as well,” he said. “Though Grantaire would no doubt protest that he had the situation entirely in hand, I for one am grateful for your intervention. I wondered—” He teased at a loose thread on his sleeve, then forced himself to stop. “I wondered if you could tell me more about what, exactly, was going on.”

“Did you ever meet Nicolas Lallemand?” Bahorel asked. There was something sharpish in his tone. “You’re also a law student, aren’t you?”

“I am, but I don’t think I’ve met him. Is he the man to ask?”

“No,” Bahorel said. “He died yesterday.”

Lesgle felt suddenly sick. “That’s— I’m very sorry. How—?”

“That, it turns out, is a matter of opinion,” Bahorel said. “You may have heard that he was trying to disarm a guardsman and so was justly shot. But I hope you don't read those kinds of newspapers.”

“As it happens, I don’t.” As it happened, he did not read any newspapers, but perhaps soon, he thought, that would change.

“A Royal Guard fired into the crowd. That is what happened.”

Lesgle hesitated, then said uncertainly, “You sound very sure.”

Bahorel abruptly leaned forward and Lesgle was afraid for a moment that he might strike him— but instead Bahorel laughed.

“Take no one’s word as gospel,” he said. “But learn what everyone thinks. Decide nothing until you have decided it for yourself. That is the way to begin.” He leaned back again. “As for my certainty— it is because I was there. I will also be at the funeral in two days. I hope you will be, too. There may be trouble,” he added with a fierce kind of grin that made Lesgle quite certain it was the trouble as much as the funeral he was ready for.

“I doubt very much I am the kind of man you want there,” Lesgle said, grinning sheepishly. “I cannot fight, I know very little of politics— I only knew about these goings-on at the Chamber of Deputies because it’s all half of my friends will speak about.”

“Then you have good friends,” Bahorel said, plainly untroubled by Lesgle’s confession. “Some say, you know, that we are born knowing right from wrong— which I suppose is why our respected elders work so hard when we are children to teach us otherwise. We must forget everything we have been told. I cannot blame anyone who has not managed to do it all alone. But now you are not alone, and now you must begin.”

“Oh, I must?” Lesgle said with careful lightness. “Yesterday, you know, I was told I must shout  _vive le roi._ ”

“Yes,” Bahorel laughed. “You were. But I amend none of what I’ve said— indeed, I never amend my words, it is a devout belief of mine— because the difference between my command and that of our bourgeois friend is this: yesterday, he approached you, and none too politely. But today— whatever you know or don’t know, or think or don’t think— you came to me.”

*

The morning of the funeral was, of a series of grey, gloomy days, the dreariest yet. Grantaire and Lesgle loitered on an unfamiliar street, uncertain if they'd come the right way, if they'd missed it, if perhaps (this suggested by Grantaire) Lesgle hadn't mistaken the directions. But they weren't alone, at least: clusters of others lined the road, and that would have to suffice for assurance they were in the right place.

They heard it before they could see it—but there was no chanting, no shouting, nothing that sounded at all like the trouble Bahorel had all but promised.

Lesgle had never seen a procession of such a size. He had seen large crowds since coming to Paris, of course— certainly larger than in Meaux— but never so many, not in one, concentrated group like this one. (He thought of his father’s funeral—who had been popular, always had many friends, and at the time he had thought in grief-hazy wonder  _the whole city must be here_  but now, in comparison, the memory of that procession seemed so quiet and small.)

And they were silent. The only sound was their footsteps. Their eyes were all fixed forward, towards the coffin, even those at the back for whom it was far, far out of sight.

Neither could move to join the procession; neither could move at all. Lesgle could not say for certain that he even breathed, not until the tail end of the cortege had passed out of sight.

He felt dizzy— but he could not blame that entirely on the funeral. He couldn’t deny that he’d perhaps been overzealous the past few days. He put a hand on Grantaire’s arm to steady himself. Grantaire glanced over at him.

“You’re white as a damn sheet,” he said.

“Should we follow?” he asked. But Grantaire started to pull him away, and he did not protest.

After they had walked in silence for some time, Lesgle said, “We have grown uncommonly quiet these past few days.”

“Well, it’s taken a year,” Grantaire said. “But I knew if I just gave it time, you’d eventually run out of things to say.”

“You’re one to say so! You’re the only person in the world with whom I can’t get a word in edgewise,” Lesgle laughed. Then he added, hesitantly, “But it was— that procession, I mean, it was— there are some things, aren’t there, where there aren’t quite— words.”

Grantaire snorted. “I’m sure you’ll have a whole oration before dinner.”

*

Grantaire spent all night with his pencil.

He drew it again and again, the procession, and it was never right. How did one draw the sound of that silence? Again and again, row after row after row of students dressed in black, until the figures devolved into the thick lines and indistinct strokes for which Gros continually chastised him. And then he’d begin again, and then again, and somehow it seemed like he was only moving farther and farther away from getting it right.

*

They learned, later, about the events of the evening of the funeral—the riots, the deaths. And more, the next day, and the next. In the morning Lesgle would find Bahorel, and Bahorel would tell him what had transpired the day before, what was planned for the day to come—but always, when invited, Lesgle would demur.

“As you should,” Grantaire said stubbornly. “How many times do you need to be knocked in the head before you learn your lesson?”

But every morning, though he said nothing, Grantiare was there at Lesgle’s side, and no matter how sharp his skepticism, he did not voice it until after Bahorel was gone. As the days passed, Lesgle thought that perhaps he had less to say. But they did not talk about it. They spent their evenings as they had before, or as close to it as they could, with wine and with failed flirtations, but it seemed to Lesgle that their hearts were not in it (he knew his wasn’t); that though they laughed no less and talked no less, what they said was— even more than usual— not what they were thinking.

*

Lesgle found out first— not from Bahorel, a fact from which he derived some pride. He was, he thought, developing sources of his own. So there was something, at least, to take comfort in. He found Grantaire at home.

“It passed,” he said without preamble.

“The law?” Grantaire said. “The one— all this has been for?”

“Yes.”

Once again, they fell silent.

It was a silence composed of every silence of the past week, of every thing they had thought and had not said. It was as if they were suspended, or balanced on the same narrow edge, sure to fall, and the question was only which way, and for one single instant either was possible— and they almost, dimly, knew it.

Grantaire stood abruptly and turned away, and when he turned back, his face was arranged into a sardonic smile. “Well, so. Our leaders can be bought. It was nothing we didn’t know before.”

“I think I know quite a few things I didn’t know before,” Lesgle said, struggling to keep his voice light. “I know they will kill peaceful citizens, workers and students— and did you hear, the law school is expelling students who they can prove were present?”

“Then it’s a good thing you weren’t.”

“Well— well, perhaps we should have been.”

“We?” He scoffed. “Don’t pull me into this. Two people would make no difference. Two hundred, two thousand—”

“How can you say that?” Lesgle demanded, earnestness breaking through at last in spite of his efforts. “How do you know that?”

“Because we have just  _seen_  it!” Grantaire burst out. His sudden fervor started Lesgle, who took an instinctive step away. “Because for a week and more people have gathered, people have argued, people have fought, been killed, and  _it did nothing._ ”

Lesgle did not speak. Grantaire looked, almost, as if he wished that he would. But he didn’t, so Grantaire had to press on.

“What is the point?” he said. “Nothing can, nothing has, nothing does— change. Our revolution turns to a bloodbath, the Americans write of liberty with their right hand and hold the chains of their slaves in the left, old man England thinks,  _ah yes, deposing monarchs, we did that once when we were young and foolish_ — what your Lallemand died for— it’s nothing. It comes to nothing.”

“I didn’t know him,” Lesgle said.

“What?”

“You called him ‘your Lallemand.’ We had not met.”

“Oh.” He paused. “ _That_  is what you choose to debate?”

It did not have the tone of his usual mocking calls for Lesgle to surrender a point; it seemed to give him no pleasure to think Lesgle was willing to concede. He folded his arms over his chest, his outburst, rather than expelling tension, only seeming to wind him tighter.

Lesgle just shrugged. “I cannot speak to the rest. It seems entirely possible that you have it all right. I don’t believe so— but it’s not something I can argue. It is only something I believe. All I do know for certain is that Nicolas Lallemand was my fellow student, and I never met him, and he was killed. And even if the only thing his death ever achieves is to make me believe that the world could yet change and I could do my part to help it— well, then, he didn’t die for absolutely nothing. Very little, I admit, if that were true,” he added with a small smile. “But it is still something.”

Another silence passed between them, broken when Lesgle said, “I am not asking you to agree.”

“Are you not?” Grantaire asked at once.

Lesgle, smiling, said, “Oh, I have learned better than to try to persuade you to do anything. Some may call it stubbornness, but I am a generous friend and will call it strength of will.”

“Matchless generosity, truly.” His tone, though more sarcastic, was still somehow softer now. “You have become such a paragon of virtue these past days, very soon I won’t be able to stand you.”

“God forbid!” Lesgle laughed. “I have no intention of becoming intolerable, though I know— I hope— you will be the first to tell me if I do.”

“That Bahorel seems like a good enough sort,” Grantaire said, with only a faintly grudging air. “Maybe he’d do the job.”

“But his Greek and Latin cannot possibly be as good as yours,” Lesgle said. He was grinning in earnest now. “And you know if I am to be chastised, I must be chastised as befits my station.”

“As a lazy student who couldn’t afford his exam fees?”

“My father was a  _very important person_  back in Meaux—” But even he couldn’t finish the sentence before the proud puff in his chest deflated as he started laughing. Grantaire did not laugh, but he could not entirely conceal his smile as he shook his head in mock-dismay.

“It’s only that it would be so much trouble to find new friends at this point,” Grantaire said. “Spending time with you has gained me a reputation far and wide— entirely unfairly— of a man of poor judgment and taste. So you see, I am stuck with you.”

“I’m very sorry for you,” Lesgle said. “I will try to make it worth your while.”

“Oh? Shall I take that as an offer of libations?”

Lesgle laughed. “Sacrifices to Dionysus, yes.”

And they set off, almost just exactly as they had on so many days before, and yet not quite.

 


End file.
